1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for determining user information through analysis of web pages accessed by a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
As Internet usage continues to rise, it becomes increasingly important to identify the demographic characteristics of Internet users. Such characteristics can help businesses and advertisers provide services to Internet users in particular demographic groups and to attract and retain new customers. To obtain this demographic information, web sites may request Internet users to enter personal demographic information. However, such user-entered information may be incomplete, thus preventing a business from obtaining a full demographic picture of a given Internet user. In other cases, demographic information supplied by an Internet user may be false or mistakenly incorrect.
Prior art machine learning techniques attempt to extrapolate user demographic information. Examples of such prior art techniques include the use of neural networks or Baysean approaches to data extrapolation. These techniques often require excessively large amounts of computation in order to extrapolate meaningfully accurate demographic information. Such cumbersome tradeoffs thus limit the desirability of such prior art methods.